LET’S TALK CUPCAKES

My Top Five Favorite St. Louis Cupcake Shops – Cupcakes

ST. LOUIS, MO: (STLRestaurant.News) A cupcake is a cupcake is a cupcake…or so they say. But is it? After taking a look at some of the highest rated by Trip Advisor, and listening to several different friends opinions, I looked a little closer to see how each one differed from the rest. And cupcakes are definitely one of my favorite topics, so I decided to write about my five favorite St. Louis Cupcakes!

Gourmet cupcakes have been all the rage across the country for some time. Some 1/2-pound creations, can cost anywhere from $4.50 to $6.50, but can be considered a meal in itself. There are excellent cupcakes out there that are a bit less expensive and will keep your sweet tooth craving for more.

Two of my favorite cupcake stops made our top 10 St Louis Bakery list back in September. Jilly’s Cupcake Bar and Cafe came in at #4 of 63 bakeries in St. Louis with 142 reviews resulting in a 4.5 Star rating and The Cup ranked #7 of 63 bakeries in St. Louis with 28 reviews resulting in a 5 Star rating.

1) Jilly’s Cupcake Bar and Café, located at 8509 Delmar Blvd, is a 2 time winner and 3 time contestant on Food Network’s Cupcake Wars. They can also boast of winning the American Culinary Federation Award of Excellence for 2014. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, USA Today named them one of the top 10 places to get a gourmet cupcake in the nation. So needless to say, their cupcakes ROCK! Besides the obvious mouthwatering fresh rich taste, they come in different sizes and start around $4.75. Jilly’s can create a special cupcake for any event, whether you’re looking for zoo animals, teddy bears or cartoon figures. You can also now purchase their custom cupcakes at Dierbergs. My personal favorite is none other than The Chocolate Thunder. This masterpiece is chocolate cake, stuffed with dark chocolate ganache, with milk chocolate and vanilla buttercream, chocolate shavings and chocolate bark. No calories there…lol.

2) The Cup and the Cakery, located at 28 Maryland Plz, has won my heart for a very long time. These cupcakes are moist and delicious and are iced with some of the best buttercream icing that I’ve ever had. They are simply addicting! Although the classic Red Velvet Cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting & red velvet crumble is right there at the top, in the fall, their Pumpkin Spice Cake with cinnamon buttercream & Kakao autumn bark is pretty hard to pass up. Prices can range from $2-5 for a cupcake depending on the type ordered. And best of all, no matter where you live, you won’t have to travel that far since they now operate two other locations, one in Chesterfield and one in Edwardsville.

3) The Sweet Divine, located at 1801 S 9th St., couldn’t have a better name to describe what they make. These cupcakes melt in your mouth! What’s really nice here is that if you’re on a diet and shouldn’t be buying a cupcake, you can purchase a mini cupcake and feel a little less guilty. They sell minis, regular & jumbo sized cupcakes topped with either buttercream or fondant starting at $1.50 and going up to $5.00 for a jumbo treat. I have a couple personal favorites here and it’s always so hard to decide between the two. The first is their scrumptious White Chocolate Raspberry. This beauty is a vanilla & white chocolate chip cupcake with a raspberry filling, raspberry buttercream, topped with white chocolate. The second is the decadent Banana Split. This is a banana cupcake with pineapple filling, strawberry buttercream, chocolate drizzle, topped with nuts & maraschino cherry on top. In 2011, the company launched a cupcake truck called “Georgie,” so if you’re lucky you can buy one of these jewels right out on the street.

4) Sweet Art, located at 2203 S 39th St, is another of my guiltiest pleasures. This funky quaint south city cafe may not make cupcakes as fancy as some of the other shops, but they lack nothing in taste and are well worth every penny. They’re made out of the same batter as their cakes. No hard decision here on my favorite and when you try it, you’ll know what I mean. It’s the Chocolate Salted Caramel. It’s the perfect mix of their tantalizing chocolate cake topped with two different types of salted caramel buttercream frosting topped with a drizzle of house-made caramel and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. What I also especially like about this shop is that they also make a point out of catering to those with dietary restrictions. You can celebrate cupcakes made without any transfats, artificial flavors or high-fructose corn syrup. They usually always have 2-3 vegan cupcake flavors available daily and one gluten-free flavor. The cost is $1.25 for a mini, $3 for a single and $33 for a dozen, $15 for a mini dozen, $4 for gluten-free and they’re baked from scratch every single day.

5) Cose Dolci Bakery, located at 425 S. Florissant Road, rounds out my top five favorite cupcake shops. Cose Dolci, means “sweet things” in Italian, and is a boutique bakery specializing in desserts made the old-fashioned way…by using only the best natural ingredients. Their cupcakes are rich and creamy and have an authentic taste. For me, the Carrot Cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting wins hands down! It is sinfully delicious. And although some customers might think that a plain vanilla cupcake with vanilla icing might be seen as boring, they’ve got that recipe mastered to perfection. Cupcakes at this shop are fairly inexpensive and, most important, deliciously light and fluffy. They’re priced at $1.50 for a regular and $3.00 for a jumbo cupcake.

LET’S TALK CUPCAKES was last modified: November 11th, 2016 by Kara Savio

Kara Savio

Kara Savio is an Emmy award-winning journalist. She has experience as a morning news anchor for an ABC Affiliate, and as a drive time news and traffic reporter on radio. As an experienced writer and storyteller, Kara currently produces feature stories for HEC-TV and STL TV; as a model and an actress, she appears in commercials, industrial films, and in magazine print ads.

Her familiar voice is frequently booked for voice over projects. Kara has earned numerous industry awards including: One Emmy Award and three Emmy nominations, Five Telly Awards, a NATOA Award, and an International Aurora Award.